 | The Sony Ericsson Satio (previously codenamed the Idou) features a 3.5 inch touchscreen display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM-Radio and a 12MP camera with Xenon flash.The Xenon light on the Satio allows you to capture quality photos even in low light. The device even has a dedicated LED light for video capture.
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It was not that long time ago when Sony Ericsson announced the Idou at MWC 2009, although the handset was later renamed the Sony Ericsson Satio. The interesting thing about the cell phone is it´s manufacturer´s “first” in several respects – the first with 12-megapixel camera, the first based on Symbian S60 and the first all-in-one multimedia smartphone in the company´s range of products. In terms of hardware, the newcomer does have what it takes to grip the attention of high-tech buffs, but let´s see if the device performs well enough to win over their love.
Design
The Satio features a 3.5-inch resistive screen with native resolution of 360x640 pixels (and cinematic 16:9 ratio) and 16 million color support. It delivers good, saturated colors in artificial lighting conditions, but doesn’t perform this well in direct sunlight. It´s not that you won´t be able to use the Satio in the open, it´s just that details are somewhat hard to distinguish in bright lighting conditions, plus its love for fingerprints makes things even worse.
It is by no means a small device, but is really light-weighted for its sheer size. It´s made of plastic almost entirely, with the only exception being the metal, sliding camera cover. As a whole, the device feels neither cheap, nor expensive when you hold it. In terms of overall design, the Satio looks like a close relative of contemporary digital cameras with touch sensitive screens. It neither has an imposing, austere presence, not cuts a fine, elegant figure and aside from the grey color solution, the Satio will be available in black and red and latter looks quite eye-catchy indeed.
The microSD card slot is on the left hand side of the Sony Ericsson Satio, along with the screen lock/unlock slider and manufacturer´s standard charger port, while the camera shutter, mode switcher and gallery access buttons are clearly visible on the opposite side. The volume rocker can be used to zoom in and out on things as well. Completely in character of Sony Ericsson, taking pictures with the phone upright in your hand feels as if you were operating a digital camera. Unfortunately, the Satio is not equipped with 3.5mm jack, meaning you will have to fork out for a proper converter, because as usual, the manufacturer doesn’t provide one.
The upper part of the back side appears raised, because the 12-megapixel camera with xenon flash is hidden right there. Aside from them, the phone is equipped with auxiliary LED light to help the handset bring objects in focus more easily. Once you slide the cover open, both the camera shutter and a small light indicator under the lens will start glowing in blue, which reminds of the Cyber-shot lineup and is something we do like.
Other features of the Satio include Wi-Fi, GPS and a 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor
At least the in-call quality is really good. Sound is loud on both ends of the line and you will have to turn it down a bit to address the noticeable crackling. Things get much better once you’ve decreased the volume a step or two, with voices becoming clearly discernible and easy to catch onto. All told, the only issue that prevents us from rating the overall in-call quality as excellent is the slight voice sharpness.
As a whole, the interface offers most of the contemporary options you would expect, but the snapshot quality that Sony Ericsson´s first 12-megapixel handset delivers can be directly compared to the images captured with the 8-megapixel Canon PowerShot SD870 IS.
All multimedia functions of the Sony Ericsson Satio are available through the beautiful Flash menu we know from previous models of the manufacturer. It comes with eye-catchy transition effects and you need to take your pick from the three options you are presented with on opening it – browse snapshots, listen to music or watch videos.
The audio player filters content by several criteria – artist, album, shows content sorted in alphabetical order, audio books, podcasts and voice notes. It has an interface that reminds us of the version found on the two-year old Sony Ericsson W960, especially during audio playback, but the application comes with quite a few eye-catchy improvements as well. On the overall, it’s comfy to use, although it lacks equalizer settings and sound effects, something we don’t like. The Satio is equipped with FM radio that features a rather simplified, yet capable interface and TrackID audio recognition engine.
The sound through the loudspeaker is reasonably loud and poweful. Unfortunately, the boxed headset is a weakling, plus the trebles and basses it produces aren't clearly discernible, something that music lovers will definitely be disappointed at. Sadly, plugging in a better pair means you will have to shell out for a proper converter to 3.5mm jack, because the Satio is equipped with the manufacturer’s proprietary port and there is no adapter in the box either.
The video player interface looks quite appealing and sports large control buttons. Aside from the standard playback options, you can stretch videos so as to make them fit the screen. Unlike the Samsung OMNIA HD, the Satio doesn’t support subtitles, DivX and Xvid files and cannot play HD videos either. Still, we didn’t have any troubles watching H.264 and MPEG4 coded MP4 files with resolution of 720x480 pixels, high bitrate of about 1,500 kbps at 30 frames per second.
The 3.5-inch display makes the experience really pleasing, although its colors are not as saturated as those delivered by the AMOLED screen of the Samsung’s multimedia monster. Ultimately, the Satio is a decent performer in terms of multimedia, but the Samsung OMNIA HD is quite better.
Camera
The Sony Ericsson Satio comes with a 12 megapixel camera with Xenon flash. The camera interface comes with 8 preset scenes, several shooting modes (panorama among them), BestPic, smile detection and touch focus to help you pick the object the camera should bring in focus (similarly to the HTC Touch Pro2).
The flash includes red eye removal, plus you can activate picture geo-tagging that utilizes the built-in GPS. Anyone who hates fiddling with the setting will be happy to find out there is an Auto option that works similarly to the Intelligent Shot function available on the LG Viewty Smart and LG Crystal - it allows the phone software to automatically make the best selection for you. If you turn it off, you will be able to manually set the color effects, white balance and exposure, but not the ISO sensitivity.
All objects appear properly exposed in snapshots taken in the good lighting conditions. Colors look realistic, yet somehow monotonous, similarly to what you get when using Sony Ericsson's K810, K850 or C905, which is quite satisfying.
The xenon flash of the Satio manages to light up nearby objects properly and not just in artificial lighting conditions, but in pitch dark places as well. Pictures are rather noisy, but at least there is no drastic loss of quality due to the lack of enough details and colors appear realistically represented. Certainly, we tested the Satio by taking pictures at night. Surprisingly, the handset actually performs better than the digital camera in terms of color representation and managed to impress us. Come to quality of details, both devices seem to perform at par, so the Satio scores another point here. Compared to the other camera phones on the market, the Satio is definitely one of the best for taking pictures in poor lighting conditions and at night.
The Sony Ericsson Satio captures videos with maximum resolution of 640x480 pixels, bitrate of about 3,900 kbps and at 30 frames per second. Their quality is really good, but still, the handset we would rather use for videos remains the Samsung OMNIA HD.
The Satio is a decent camera phone, offering great night shots. If you are in the market for one of the top camera phones in the market, you wont have to look further than the Sony Ericsson Satio.
The Sony Ericsson Satio is the first model of the manufacturer running Symbian S60. Actually it's 5th Edition, the same version that powers the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97, Samsung OMNIA HD etc. Similarly, the interface has had a facelift to keep it in step with the overall styling of the other Sony Ericsson models.
The StandBy home screen theme is totally different from the standard ones that come with the operating system, although these are also available. Sony Ericsson´s theme consists of 5 tabs, located at the top of the screen that allow access to different functions and are easy to switch between by sliding your finger or simply pressing them. So, here´s what the 5 tabs have to offer.
The Sony Ericsson Satio comes with several preinstalled applications that can be found in a submenu called My Apps. Aside from the two games, Labyrinth and Sudoku, here is what you get:
There are no changes in the phone organizer and contacts and they are just as good as the versions found on other handsets with the same operating system. You have several entry options when creating messages and similarly to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, you can use handwriting recognition, small, but full QWERTY keyboard that can be moved around the screen, full screen, landscape QWERTY keyboard and standard numeric keypad. The email client is the standard app that´s integrated into Symbian S60 5th Edition and it supports several email accounts. Switching between them is not exactly handy, because you need to log out of the currently selected account to log into another. As we have already mentioned in our reviews of other Symbian S60 5th Edition handsets, we would rather use Nokia´s alternative application – Nokia Messaging. Unfortunately, Nokia doesn’t have plans to support other than its devices.
Software
- The first allows you to take a look at a vertical scroll list of your favorite contacts. If you select an entry, you will be able to take your pick from the options that pop up, i.e. give the person a call, send them a message or edit the entry.
- - The second tab hosts shortcuts of up to 8 of your favorite internet pages.
- - The third is, by default, the home screen itself and pressing the end button gets you back to it automatically. The interesting thing is that there is shortcut at the bottom of the screen that leads to the Sony Ericsson´s audio Flash menu. Even if you leave the audio player running in the background, you will still be able to see the track name and all necessary playback controls. There are four other shortcuts at the bottom that get you to the dialing menu, multimedia Flash Menu, your messages and the search function that you can use to locate information on the phone itself as well as on the Internet (via Google).
- - The fourth tab is actually a gallery of pictures taken with the 12-megapixel camera of the Sony Ericsson Satio. They get visualized in huge size on the large 3.5-inch display and can be scrolled by sliding your finger up or downwards. If you spot a picture you like, you can easily set it as wallpaper, send it in a message, share it on the Internet or see it in the fully functional Gallery app with just a few clicks. Come to sharing content on the Internet, you get two preinstalled services – Picasa and Blogger. Certainly, more can be added manually, but it would have been nice if at least Facebook was here.
- - The last leads to a vertical menu where you can place up to 8 shortcuts to applications and functions of your own choosing.
The Sony Ericsson Satio comes with several preinstalled applications that can be found in a submenu called My Apps. Aside from the two games, Labyrinth and Sudoku, here is what you get:
- SMS Preview shows you the latest text message directly onto the home screen - we do like both the idea and implementation of the app;
- YouTube – sports quite an appealing interface really, that sadly works in landscape only. On the other hand, it packs beautiful transition effects, well-made video player, handy buttons and allows easy navigation;
- Facebook application that shows the current status of your online buddies, the number of your unread messages and nudges you´ve got, all add-me-as-a-friend requests and all of your event participations. If you press any of the options available on screen, you will be re-directed to the internet page of the popular social network service. In our opinion, the Facebook app is designed to notify you of various events only and its functionality is a far cry from what the iPhone and Windows Mobile versions deliver. In this case, we would rather use the touch screen version of the official webpage available at touch.facebook.com
For web browsing you get the standard WebKit-based browser that comes with the operating system to browse the Internet. You have Overview mode, zooming in and out on things and full screen mode. All pages visualize almost as they would have on a normal computer, except for certain Flash elements like the video players of Vimeo.com or Viddler.com. In addition, there isn’t a kinetic scrolling, like in the N97, but as a whole, we are pleased with the browser. Not last, the 3.5-inch screen makes surfing the Internet a pleasing experience.
The audio player filters content by several criteria – artist, album, shows content sorted in alphabetical order, audio books, podcasts and voice notes. It has an interface that reminds us of the version found on the two-year old Sony Ericsson W960, especially during audio playback, but the application comes with quite a few eye-catchy improvements as well. On the overall, it’s comfy to use, although it lacks equalizer settings and sound effects, something we don’t like. The Satio is equipped with FM radio that features a rather simplified, yet capable interface and TrackID audio recognition engine.
The 3.5-inch display makes the experience really pleasing, although its colors are not as saturated as those delivered by the AMOLED screen of the Samsung’s multimedia monster. Ultimately, the Satio is a decent performer in terms of multimedia, but the Samsung OMNIA HD is quite better.
Conclusion
If the Satio had rolled out earlier, say at the end of the summer, it would have had a better chance of becoming a popular device. However, it took Sony Ericsson about 9 months to release it on the market since the cell phone got officially announced at MWC 2009 - this is quite a long time these days, even more so because the competition.
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